Can Institutions be Reformed from Within?

Evidence from a Randomized Experiment with the Rajasthan Police
Abhijit Banerjee^, Raghabendra Chattopadhyay*, Esther Duflo^, Daniel Keniston†, Nina Singh‡ Abstract Institutions in developing countries, particularly those inherited from the colonial period, are often thought to be subject to strong inertia. This study presents the results of a unique randomized trial testing whether these institutions can be reformed through incremental administrative change. The police department of the state of Rajasthan, India collaborated with researchers at US and Indian universities to design and implement four interventions to improve police performance and the public’s perception of the police in 162 police stations (covering over one-fifth of the State’s police stations and personnel): (1) placing community observers in police stations; (2) a freeze on transfers of police staff; (3) in‐service training to update skills; and (4) weekly duty rotation with a guaranteed day off per week. These reforms were evaluated using data collected through two rounds of surveys including police interviews, decoy visits to police stations, and a large-scale public opinion and crime victimization survey—the first of its kind in India. The results illustrate that two of the reform interventions, the freeze on transfers and the training, improved police effectiveness and public and crime victims’ satisfaction. The decoy visits also led to an improvement in police performance. The other reforms showed no robust effects. This may be due to constraints on local implementation: The three successful interventions did not require the sustained cooperation of the communities or the local authorities (the station heads) and they were robustly implemented throughout the project. In contrast, the two unsuccessful interventions, which required local implementation, were not systematically implemented.

*Indian Institute of Management ^Massachusetts Institute of Technology †Yale University ‡ Rajasthan Police We thank Clément Imbert, Selvan Kumar, Dhruva Kothari, Neil Buddy Shah, and Pankaj Verma for their outstanding contributions as research assistants on this project. We are indebted to M.K. Devarajan, and M. L. Lather for their insights and comments, and A.S. Gill, formerly Director General of Police of Rajasthan police, for initiating and constantly supporting this research. The findings and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not in any way engage the responsibility of the Rajasthan police. The paper was written in complete independence and the Rajasthan police, as an institution, did not weigh in on the analysis of the data or the drafting of the report. All the data collected in the course of this project is available for download and public use (including, but not limited to, replication of our results) at http://dvn.iq.harvard.edu/dvn/dv/jpal. We are grateful for funding from the Will and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the UNODC. The Hewlett Foundation was not involved in the drafting of this project.

1. Introduction
Institutions are widely recognized to be a prime determinant of a nation’s success or failure (Rodrik, Subramanian, and Trebbi 2004). A common view in political economy (see, for example, Acemoglu and Robinson 2011) is that institutions are also very difficult to reform: bad institutions tend to self-perpetuate, since those in power also have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. This is why developing countries that inherited extractive institutions from the colonial era tend to have bad institutions today and, as a result, weak economic performance. The police could be regarded as the archetypal sclerotic institution: while there are examples of police reform in a few countries (for instance in the ex-Soviet states or in South Africa), in many developing countries (e.g. India, parts of Africa [Opolot 1992], Malaysia [Tan 2005]) the police largely retained the organization and rules established by the colonial power. In India, the setting for this paper’s study, the Police Act of 1861 is still in effect. Since 1977, a succession of police reform commissions have recommended wide-ranging changes, but implementation, so far, has been essentially inexistent. There is considerable skepticism on the desire or ability of the police to reform itself, to the point where there is a Supreme Court case seeking to compel the Indian states to comply with past reform commissions' findings (Prakash Singh vs. Union of India). This article investigates whether gradual reform can be implemented in such a setting, and whether it has the potential to improve police performance and perception. The reform effort was initiated by A.S. Gill, then the Director General of the police in Rajasthan, India’s largest state (342,239 square kilometers), with a population of over 56 million inhabitants as of 2001. The objective of the project was to identify promising reforms among those proposed by the various police commissions, attempt to implement them in the State, and rigorously evaluate their impact on police behavior and population and victim satisfaction. Remarkably, the decision was taken to evaluate the effectiveness through a series of randomized control trials, conducted in collaboration with J-PAL, a research center based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with the goal of promoting and testing development

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projects through rigorous evaluation, and led by a research team including a senior police officer (Nina Singh) and MIT researchers. In an 18 month project, four reform interventions were implemented in a randomized fashion across 162 police stations across 11 districts of the state, representing 21% of the police stations in the state: (1) weekly rotation of duty assignments including a guaranteed day off each week; (2) a freeze on transfers of police staff; (3) in-service training to update skills; and (4) placing community observers in police stations. These reforms were chosen because they had been recommended by police experts and because, if successful, they had the potential to be scaled up in Rajasthan and elsewhere. In particular they implied a minimal budget outlay or manpower increase, if any, and did not require changes in the fundamental processes used by the police (unlike, for example, the introduction of incentive pay). In other words, these are gradual reforms that the police could implement from within. To evaluate these reforms, data was collected through two rounds of surveys (before and after the intervention) including police interviews, decoy visits by surveyors to police stations, and a large-scale crime survey—the first of its kind in India. The results suggest that two of the interventions, the freeze on transfers and the training, were effective in improving police effectiveness and public image. Both increased the reported satisfaction of crime victims with the police investigation, and the freeze on transfers also decreased the number of respondents who report fearing the police. Interestingly, the visits of decoy surveyors pretending to register crimes at police stations, which were initially conceived of primarily as a method of data collection, also had an effect of their own on police behavior-suggesting that a simple increase in monitoring may have a positive effect on police performance. The other reforms showed no robust effects. The fact that the interventions mainly affected the perception of the police is exactly as it was meant to be. The police establishment is deeply concerned about the potential alienation of the public, which they see as a major constraint on their ability to be effective in “serious” cases such as terrorist attacks and other major crimes, where the willing cooperation of the public can be essential.

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Why did some interventions seem to achieve their objectives while other did not? A clue can be found in the level of implementation of the reforms on the ground. The training was implemented quite systematically as planned and while transfers were far from frozen in the selected police stations, they reduced significantly for the entire duration of the experiment. The decoy visits also happened as scheduled. In contrast, the implementation of the day off and duty roster, while good at the beginning, rapidly collapsed: after about five months, there was no significant difference in the incidence of days off in treatment and control stations. There is also no clear sense that rotation was implemented in a systematic basis after the initial few month of the initiative. Similarly, during random visits to police stations, surveyors could very rarely saw a community observer at the appointed time. Why, then, were some interventions implemented and others not? A common thread of the three interventions that were actually implemented is that they were “top-down,” and required little cooperation from the ground staff: transfers must be approved at police headquarters (although there is considerable pressure from outside for some transfers), and training orders were dispatched from above. The decoy visits were performed by an independent company supervised by J-PAL. In contrast, the two unsuccessful interventions required effort and cooperation from the station chiefs (and, in the case of the community observers, participation at the community level). Relying on the “command and control” approach that is the standard practice by the police, the project depended upon the compliance of subordinate officers to an order given by the hierarchy, and did not attempt to structure the reforms in a way that was in their direct interest (to take a clear example, the day off did not apply to the station chiefs!). In practice, it proved relatively easy for them to subvert the implementation in a way that let them go back to the status quo, despite the commitment to the reform at the highest level. This underscores the importance of details in the design of reform attempts: the ability of the lowest level of a system to resist change could be just as responsible for institutional inertia as the elite’s interest and ability to preserve the status quo. Of course, such an interpretation cannot be justified on purely experimental grounds. There may be many other reasons why these interventions were better implemented, and yet more reasons 4

why, even if they had been, they may not have worked. Nevertheless, focusing on the details of the implementation, in combination with the impact evaluation results from a set of quite different reforms--all implemented at the same time in the same locations within the same institution--offers a relatively rare view into the constraints on institutional reform. In particular, our results highlight both the possibility of quite large improvements from relatively cheap interventions, but also the risk of their being blocked by the ground-level participants. The paper begins in section 2 with an introduction to police reform and performance problems in contemporary India. In section 3, we describe the reform interventions, and outline the data collection strategies and instruments used to evaluate them. Section 4 reports the results of the baseline survey, including the first representative crime statistics from a state-wide household survey in India. Section 5 describes the outcomes of the reform interventions, and section 6 investigates the reasons why many of them may have failed to show an effect on either the public opinion or police behavior. Finally, we conclude in section 7 with implications for policy and further study of police and government reform.

2. Policing and Police Reform in India
Like many developing countries, independent India inherited a police force initially designed to protect the interests of the colonial power. The British colonial administration established an Indian police force in which senior officers were recruited through a competitive examination held in London that was initially open only to the British citizens. Local constables formed the main interface between the public and the police, but they were accountable only to the British colonial establishment they served and had little opportunities for advancement. Fraternization with the public was discouraged (Kolsky 2011). The onset of democracy after independence did little to change the colonial organization of the police, while the social, economic, and political dynamics of India have transformed dramatically. The Police Act of 1861 remains in effect, and with it a highly centralized police force in which the station-level police staff is accountable only to a cadre of elite officers, chosen through competitive examinations inspired by the pre-independence British exams. These senior

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Since transfers of police staff between more or less desirable posting locations are one of the few incentives that officers can manipulate. the interaction of the imperial police institution with an increasingly prosperous. and performance bonuses or even medals and other tokens of recognition are extraordinarily rare. A second. elected representatives informally intervene at the lower levels of the police hierarchy as well. and there is no formal system of duty rotation or allocation. The National Police Commission (NPC) observed in 1979 that. police staff remain on duty for twenty-four hours a day.officers (members of the Indian Police Service. In practice. “the threat of transfer is the most potent weapon in the hands of politicians to bend down the police to his will” (15. Transparency International 2005). who in turn reports to the elected state chief minister. the frequency of transfers has risen to a level that may be much higher than would be the case if other incentives were available (one-third of all policemen got transferred in our control stations over a period of eighteen months). or to protect themselves or others from prosecution (Human Rights Watch 2009). Perhaps the fundamental constraint on the police institutions as they stand today is that they provide little means for senior officers to incentivize their staff. educated. both within the police and outside it. All assignment of leave and duties is at the discretion of the police station chief. While even colonial British observers bemoaned the faults of the Indian police system (Police Commission 1903). While this system is clearly suboptimal. to highlight a set of pressing problems (Verma 2005).14). seven days a week. 6
. or IPS) report to the state-level director general of police (DGP). Other sources suggest that transfers are both a source of corruption (as police officers pay bribes to politicians and senior officers to retain a good posting). In theory. and empowered population has led many. Virtually all promotions are based on seniority or standardized tests. related problem is that Indian police procedural regulations provide little guidance on management of human resources at the police station level. and a barrier to law enforcement (because officers may be reluctant to take action in politically sensitive cases) (Wade 1985. for example to enforce transfers of constables or officers they do not approve of. its costs are accentuated when the incentives offered to police staff are used to further partisan or corrupt motives.

As of today. They have also emphasized the need to communicate to the public a “clear understanding of the limitations and constraints within which the police has to function” (NPC 61. Official data on crime rates. as well as the ex-Soviet States (Capari and Marenin 2005) and South Africa (Bruce and Neild 2005). the reporting rate may be lower in poorly performing stations precisely because people are afraid of the police and expect them to be unresponsive. known as Police Complaint Authority at the district and State levels . 7
. Even in the best of circumstances such an ad-hoc system is susceptible to accusations of favoritism in assigning desirable duties. Police officers can thus manipulate the crime rate in their jurisdictions by simply refusing to register victims' complaints. Several of the Indian police reform committees have recommended the creation of civilian oversight institutions for the police. use crimes statistics based on crime victimization surveys (household surveys conducted by independent agency) to measure crime. A fourth issue is the lack of accountability and communication with the public.) and “soft” skills (mediation. Verma (2005) suggested the creation of “citizens’ boards” with extensive powers to investigate complaints against police personnel. and many officers report feeling overworked and burnt out (Sidhu 2004). Underlying may of the negative outcomes in police performance and public image is the lack of skills.Whenever a genuine effort was made to register all crime…the figures showed such fantastic jumps as were impossible with any normal increase in one year” (62. and many developing countries. this is not the case in India.” (CHRI 2005). most countries.46) . both “professional” (investigation methods. and evaluate their performance at the district level.10). etc. Precisely because registration rates are not a reliable source for crime statistics. most European countries. as reported in the media and used to evaluate the police themselves. Furthermore. are based solely on the number of cases registered in police stations. The NPC acknowledges this: “The unreliability of crime statistics in India is well known…. including the US. Such experiences have been tried in several developed countries.whose incentives may not be aligned with the long-term welfare of the rest of the staff or society in general. to promote accountability. The Indian system of crime records is another source of perverse incentives.

While many have emphasized the need for scientific investigation skills (Verma 2004). Subsequently there have been a series of commissions aimed at reforming various facets of policing. refresher courses are scarce. Without any guidance about how this is to be achieved. The committee produced the Model Police Act to guide the states in overhauling their police institutions and succeeded in motivating a few states to draft new police legislation. no state has fully complied with the directives and the institutional structure of the Indian state police forces remains largely as it has been for the past 50 years or more. and given police tradition.communication) have frequently been recognized as significant barriers to effective policing (The Hindu 2011). In Punjab. The NPC stated that. the Supreme Court of India. In 2006. in its judgment in Prakash Singh vs Union of India. In response to lack of systematic reform and the perceived need for change on the ground. the Indian central government has launched several top-down police reform initiatives. chest measurements etc).09). the National Police Commission of 1977. there has been little implementation: as of 2011. culminating in the establishment of the Soli Sorabjee Committee (2005). In response to these and other perceived weaknesses in the police administration. Here too. the traditional colonial attitudes of the police are also inadequate to command public trust in a changed environment. The most influential. and only education through class 10 (less than high school) is required. After the initial training of 12 months for constables. but few of its recommendations have been put into practice. Constables are recruited mainly on physical characteristics (height. highlighted many of the failings described above and recommended progressive reforms. a project reviewed in Sidhu 8
. individual officers have taken initiatives at the local level. two years for Sub-Inspectors and Station House Officers (head of police stations). but none have fully implemented them. directed the state governments to constitute institutions and draft mechanisms for improving the effectiveness and accountability of police. “It is considered basic and fundamental…that every police officer develops an attitude of courtesy and consideration combined with sympathy and understanding towards any member of the public who comes to him seeking help” (41. this injunction has remained in the realm of wishful thinking.

In 2007 the total force consisted of 70. Similarly. and under the leadership of the then director general 9
.767 personnel. the Rajasthan Police introduced a community policing program to build a partnership between police and the public to resolve petty disputes and foster mutual understanding. these programs are often dependent on the support and enthusiasm of a single individual or administration. Motivated by the lukewarm reception and ambiguous results of these earlier reforms. they are not generally considered (or portrayed in the media) to be being particularly compromised or ineffective compared to police forces in other states. and the police leadership found that they had little reliable data on public perceptions and victim satisfaction with which to evaluate whether their efforts were successful. had generated substantial debate among senior officers.
3. divided among 711 police stations and 38 districts . In 2007 the Rajasthan Police undertook a variety of reform initiatives. These. The lack of broad support may be due to the absence of any objective.2% of Rajasthan police staff are members of the senior IPS cadre. and cease operation after their exit. in 2002. while 76% are constables--the lowest rank. substantial data on success. At the time of this research. only 0.(2004) instituted a weekly day off for police personnel to reduce their level of stress and improve productivity in police stations. for example introducing some elements of community policing. the Rajasthan Police had not invested in capital modernization to the extent of the police in the large cities of Mumbai. there is little basis to compare the claims of the supporters and detractors of such initiatives. etc. However. The Rajasthan Police Experiment: Design and Objectives
The key features of the police of the State of Rajasthan are broadly characteristic of the police in the rest of India. Crime rates were broadly comparable with other Indian states: Rajasthan ranked 4th out of 28 states in total crimes serious enough to be investigated without court order. Delhi or the states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh (home of the IT clusters of Bangalore and Hyderabad). however. investing in some police stations to bring them to ISO international norm. Consistent with the traditional hierarchical organizational structure of the Indian police. However. introducing duty rotation among traffic police in Jaipur. the police launched a new series of programs designed to address concerns about evaluation and scaling up. but 25th in murder rates.

the community observers were local volunteers who would sit in the police station for approximately three hours daily during its peak operating hours. The observers’ sole task was to watch the activities within the 10
. 2. consultations with judges and police experts). Weekly day off and duty roster system: Police station-level duties. This. 3. court liaison. Based on these criteria. better informed officers and higher overall productivity. Second. after a four-month feasibility study conducted by the research team (which included interviews at various level of the hierarchy.effective enough to be implemented in any police station in Rajasthan and the rest of India if they were found to be effective. in particular. feasible approach was explicitly sought. Exceptions could be made for well-documented cases of police misconduct requiring a transfer. were to be allocated to staff on a rotating basis according to a written schedule. sentry duty. night patrolling.. they would be rigorously evaluated. In smaller police stations. The goal was not necessarily to create more rotations from duty to duty (which seems to happen fairly frequently in police stations anyway). However. the station chief had the option of extending the rotation period up to fifteen days. The entire staff in selected police stations (except the station chief) received one day off every eight days. interventions would be simple and cost. implied that they should not require fundamental changes in the policing legislation or impose extra financial burdens on the state: a gradual. etc. lower stress. such as clerk constable. but to create a transparent and fair system of work allocation that would lead to less jockeying for positions. more predictability. where the shortage of manpower might be more acute. and a small pilot conducted in eleven police stations over two months. Freezing of transfers: All administrative transfers were prohibited for personnel posted to police stations selected for this intervention for less than two years during the program period. it was explicitly designed to be different from the past along two dimensions: First. This new round of reforms was meant to address the key issues mentioned above. serving summons. Community observers: Introduced for the first time in Rajasthan. enlisted a few senior staff members in the effort (including a co-author of this article). providing quantitative data for future policy decisions. and was inspired by previous efforts and the recommendations of experts.of police. the police launched four reform initiatives which satisfied those criteria: 1.

4. with general supervision done at the level of state police headquarters. to provide community oversight in the police station. and police station chiefs were responsible for carrying out the reforms in their stations. sub-inspectors and assistant sub-inspectors) were trained for 6 days at the Rajasthan Police Academy with inputs on improving investigation procedures. stress management. 11
. and potential complainants could thus decide to visit the police stations during those times. procedures and challenges faced by the police. Soft skills: 1541 police personnel of all ranks were trained for three days on improving public relations with inputs on “soft skills” such as communication. The duration was for a period of one and half years. to give a group of citizens firsthand experience with the police in a positive setting and encourage them to share their experience with others. team building. change etc. Each of them was to visit the police station only once or twice before suggesting a replacement. It was hoped that the presence of the observer would encourage the police to treat complainants with more sympathy and patience: the hours at which the observer was in the station were publicly posted. To avoid creating a large burden on any one person. The community observer program had two main goals: first. mediation. The primary implementation of the reforms was performed through the police hierarchy. with emphasis on scientific techniques. motivation. and to address the concern that previous efforts at community participation in police had raised--that the community liaison groups were just selected by the police to be cronies--each selected police station compiled a list of up to 100 community observers. and second. attitudinal.police station and become familiar with the duties. In-Service training program: Randomly selected police personnel were given training in at least one of two modules: Professional/Investigation skills: 292 investigating officers (inspectors. such as field techniques and documentation. The district superintendents of police supervised the overall implementation in their respective districts. leadership.

with districts chosen to be geographically representative of the state of Rajasthan. Pratapgarh. this was not a “gold plated. Alwar. Nagaur.
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. Dholpur. Barmer. staff members were randomly selected for the training intervention with the total percentage of staff trained in each station randomized at 0%. because trained officers get “contaminated” by those who have retained their old methods? Or is the effect broadly linear?
1
The eleven districts chosen for the project were Ajmer. and Udaipur. Districts were chosen randomly across Rajasthan. but a full-scale rehearsal of what the reforms would look like if they were to be broadly implemented. and urban/rural environment. The police stations were randomly assigned (by the research team.Evaluation Strategy
162 police stations across 11 districts of Rajasthan were included in the sample1. 50% or 75% or 100% of station personnel. This scale was not only necessary to get adequate power. using stratification to ensure a balance on geographical area (district). These variables are included as controls in all regressions performed in this study. 25%. and all stations within a district were eligible for inclusion in the program with the exception of those already involved in the state's ISO 9000 certification program.
Hanumangarh. Within each police station. The sample represents a substantial fraction of the state: over 20% of the police stations in the state and a population of almost 8 million people. criminality (number of cases registered in 2005). it also gives meaning to success (or failure) in implementation. Chittorgarh. Kota City. using a computerized randomization) to different reform strategies. Jaipur City East.” small-scale experiment. This allows us to detect whether the effects of training are different when few or almost all the officers are trained: is it sufficient to train a few police officers who will then train others? Or is a critical mass necessary to get any impact. The experiment was thus on a scale larger than the entire country of Denmark.

To assess a possible Hawthorne effect—the possibility that the police stations participating in the program might change their responses or behavior simply because they are being observed by outside evaluators--an additional group of police stations. and the program elements implemented in that group in columns 1-4. wherever the community observer or weekly day off/duty roster interventions were attempted. at which point they were surveyed like all other stations. The Hawthorne effect can be estimated by comparing the control and “pure control” (those who were only brought in at the very end of the project) groups. As shown in column 4. unannounced visits to all police stations to collect data on program implementation.
Public Surveys
The public image of the police is both one of the most important outcomes of the project and the most difficult to measure. and second. had no staff trained.
Data
A series of surveys and interviews were conducted to establish baseline levels of police performance and public perception of the police at baseline and endline.harvard. with the number of police stations in each group in column 1. transfers were also frozen. since impressions are subjective and tenuous. This was done for two reasons: First. because long tenure of staff is considered necessary to get acquainted with the area and people of the police station jurisdiction and see if this has any effect on their performance. This implies that the impact of duty roster and community observers (or the combination of the two in the all interventions stations) will be seen on top of the impact of the freezing of transfers.A significant amount of data was collected on the participating stations. Table 1 describes how the police stations were allocated to each evaluation group. due to concerns about attrition during the study. the “pure control” was also randomly selected. and were never visited by investigators until the final end-line survey.iq. as well as conducting random. These police stations were not informed of the project.edu/dvn/dv/jpal. These included traditional household surveys. on a relatively regular basis. as well as to estimate the effectiveness of the police implementation. These rich data sets are one of the outcomes of the project: they are available for public use at http://dvn. surveys of police personnel. These issues. combined 13
.

interactions with the police. administered to a randomly chosen adult in the household.
Police Surveys and Case-Handling Grading
To measure the effects of the interventions on police performance. these questionnaires do not capture “victimless crimes” such as gambling or drug use. and the victim’s satisfaction with police actions.  A crime victim survey. In conjunction.
The individual was asked about his or her contact with the police. inquiring whether any member of the household had been a victim of a crime in the previous year. randomly chosen from the 2004 voters list.  An opinion survey. The households that could be located again were re-interviewed along with 3. customized to the Indian context in order to make their results comparable with the crime categories of the Indian Penal Code.441 newly chosen households in the autumn of 2008. This survey ascertained greater detail about the crime. In total 5. and perceptions of police performance and integrity.895 households were interviewed: A baseline was conducted with 2. a survey was conducted of the police staff. Within each household. Like any crime victimization survey. necessitated a household survey that would be both in depth—to capture the various aspects of public perception—and large enough to detect a small change in opinion. no attempt was made to measure the incidence of domestic violence because of concerns about the accuracy of reporting and the possibility of decreased respondent cooperation. 982 case files were randomly 14
. One-half of the staff of all ranks (2. The crime-related surveys were broadly based upon the UNICRI’s International Crime and Victimization Survey. administered to each individual crime victim in the
household or a surrogate if the victim remained unreachable after multiple survey attempts. three modules were administered (at baseline and endline):  A general crime screener questionnaire administered to the head of the
household.454 households in the spring of 2007. Also.367 in total) in treatment and control police stations was randomly selected from administrative personnel lists to be interviewed by surveyors at both baseline and endline surveys.with the fact that extremely few citizens actually interact with the police.

but as Appendix Table A1 shows. whether scientific techniques were used.
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. despite considerable effort to guarantee confidentiality of the surveys. only 65 percent of individuals interviewed in the baseline could be re-interviewed in the end line survey. We will also present the case review data as a complementary source of information. the evaluation of the police survey and case review were compromised due to the high number of transfers among the police staff despite the freeze of transfer intervention. we will mainly use this data to provide illustrative summary statistics from the baseline survey. Furthermore. and it is very difficult to know whether a particular officer should be attributed to a particular station. and the answers seem to be affected by social desirability bias. Due to these transfers. The retired officers filled out a detailed report about each case in which they graded the performance of the officer on both his actions at the crime scene. retention in the survey is affected by the no-transfer intervention. In view of these potential biases.2 This attrition raises the possibility that the sample of officers included in the final survey differs across treatments in important but unobservable characteristics.selected from the project police stations and sent to a group of retired senior police officers for grading in two rounds. it varies significantly across the other interventions as well. Unfortunately. and the care with which the evidence was collected and documents in the case file were prepared. half before the training and half post-training.
Visit of Decoy Victim Surveyors
2
While the relatively high attrition in the weekly off/duty rotation and all-interventions groups might be
attributed to the absence of staff on the day of the survey due to their being on weekly off. As expected. by the time of the endline we find no actual difference in days of leave between the police stations employing weekly off and those that were not. police officers tended to be worried about the fact that the data could be shared with their superiors.

such as the total time taken and the names of the officers with whom he interacted. a “decoy” surveyor program was developed in which surveyors visited police stations in the treatment and control groups and attempted to register cases posing as victims of various types of crimes.To provide an alternative indicator of police performance. and other details.
3
16
.
Stolen mobile phone (29%). These visits were unannounced and the surveyor did not disclose his identity except in situations where it seemed that the police would actually register the case (to avoid registering a false case. stolen railway ticket (10%). it is also an intervention in itself. stolen bicycle (15%). This allowed for data to be collected on an alternate set of pure control police stations where the officers were not aware of the existence of the reform project without contaminating the pure controls in the intervention districts. Although the decoy program was designed to monitor the other interventions. after the first few rounds of decoy visits we began hearing reports from field staff that police officers may have been improving their behavior so as to perform better for potential decoy visits. since it provides a check on police behavior with the crime victims. or if the situation otherwise required that the surveyor disclose his identity--for instance. harassment of female relative (9%). and their propensity to record cases or not. Indeed. Immediately after the visit to the police station. the attitudes and actions of the police. where the tendency to under-register may be the greatest. victim of dangerous driving (8%). burglary (1%). Knowing that their behavior is thus monitored can induce the policemen to behave better with crime victims in case one of them is actually a decoy. which is illegal). if the police threatened to prosecute him for filing a false case. The crimes chosen were not representative of the entire population of possible crimes: we chose scenarios where the crime was relatively petty3. domestic violence (2%). the surveyor completed a short form recording his success or failure in registration. To test this possibility we extended decoy intervention to 46 police stations outside the 10 districts assigned to the program. stolen suitcase (25%).

Columns 1 and 2. Crime and Policing in Rajasthan: Baseline Status
The baseline data collected for the project provides further evidence on the context and background for the interventions and the study. The differential decreases for violent crimes: Rape or molestation surveyed rates are 1.9% of all reported crimes.7% of individuals were victims of a crime in the past year. with Kota (a city near the border with the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh) the highest at 3. Which of these measures best reflects public opinion of crimes? To perform this analysis we use the public opinion survey.
Crime
The detailed crime survey provides the first large-scale representative estimates of the crime rate in Rajasthan. This estimate excludes crimes of domestic violence. Crime rates differed widely and significantly across districts. and exclude the opinions of crime victims themselves. which motivated our choices of interventions. followed by burglary at 16.4.35 times higher than in police records. The comparison of crime surveys and official police records reveals a high correlation between the two (at the police station-level. show that when all three crime rate 17
.5).8%. especially for property crimes: survey theft rates are 9. it confirms many of the problems that were mentioned in the context study. in which the dependent variable is an indicator equal to 1 if the respondent replies that the police are successful in controlling major or minor crimes.43 times rates reported to the police. with 37. but household crime surveys show substantially higher crime levels and reflect public perceptions of crime levels better than official statistics.9% of households had at least one member who was a victim of a crime. Per-capita crime rates are substantially higher from survey data.5% crime victimization. Theft was by far the most common type of crime. Table 3 shows regressions of public opinion survey respondents' views police performance and crime rates on crime statistics at the station level from both police reports and household surveys. and assault is only 11% higher in the survey (neither difference is statistically significant). which were not surveyed because of accuracy concerns. and Nagaur (a very rural district) the lowest at 0. since their perceptions may have been distorted by their direct encounter with crime.24 times registered rates and robbery rates are 11. We find that 1. and that 5.6% and assault at 12%. In particular. about 0.

only the total crimes recorded from the household survey are significant. column 4 regresses an indicator for whether respondents feel that crime has increased in the past three years on the percentage change in crime between 2006 and 2007. substantial numbers of crime victims did not go to the police because they thought that the police were incapable of helping (20%) or unwilling to help (17%). most crime victims never report their incidents to the police.=9% level. albeit only at the p. While the biggest reason for not reporting a crime was lack of importance perceived by the victim (28%). Indeed. Despite the measurement error due to the different recall periods. Important cases such as motorcycle theft and assault were registered relatively more frequently (75% and 61%. Only 29% of the crime victims we surveyed stated that they had visited a police station to report the crime. while crime reports from household surveys are substantially correlated with police records. respectively) than theft (12%) and vandalism (17%). It is important to note that the “lack of importance” may reflect the perception that the police would not treat the case seriously even if reported (and may refuse to register it): thus the figure of 17% unregistered crimes may be a severe underestimate if the entire population of incidents was considered: people may not attempt to register an incident that they know would not be reported. Finally. 17% did not succeed in registering a case. we find changes in total crimes reported on the household survey to be positively associated with perceived changes in crimes. Thus. to the degree that they differ the survey data gives a significantly better representation of crime as experienced by the population.
Reporting of Crime by Citizens and Registration of Crime by Police
The difference between the level of registered cases and the level of crime actually reported in the survey suggest that many crimes are not reported. Changes in crimes registered with the police are completely insignificant.
18
.indicators are included in the regression. which looks at whether respondents report that thefts are a problem. Both are significant in column 3. Among those who attempted to report their crimes.

in the decoy police were willing to register First Information Report (FIR) only 54% of the time from the decoy surveyors. this rate was quite variable across types of crimes. (forthcoming). they also find that in our data there is no actual increase in the incidence of crime. However. suggests that using crimes registered in police stations as a measure of crime rate is profoundly misleading. by construction. House break-ins were registered 92% of the time.
Victim Satisfaction
4
A very interesting of the discrepancy between reporting and actual crim is provided in Iyer et
al. the Indian National Sample Surveys). which do not suffer from any selection or recall problem.4 Indeed. They show that reported of crime against women increases when political positions are reserved for women at the local level. and reports of stolen motorcycles led to 64% FIR registration. decoy surveyors claiming that they had lost railway tickets or had mobile phones stolen succeeded in registering a case only 43% and 40% of the time.
19
. with more serious and verifiable cases registered significantly more frequently. On the other hand. respectively.This is clearly demonstrated by the results of the decoy survey. Overall. plus the fact that many crime victims do not actually bother to report the crime. the analysis of the data of household crime survey conducted during the course of the program reflects public perception of crime better than the official registration of crime at the police stations. The low rate of registration in the decoys. However. which could be conducted in conjunction with other nationally representative surveys (e.g. both in this data and in nationally representative data. This underscores the need for an independent crime survey.

Not surprisingly. They found that 69% of the time the police were polite. The probability that the victims expressed satisfaction with the police was 20% higher when the police took some action to investigate after the crime. Actual success in investigation led to the greatest effects in satisfaction: 22% higher when the police made an arrest. a demand for bribes by the police reduced the level of satisfaction by 17%. In 65% of visits the surveyor’s complaint was immediately addressed by the police staff and less than 5% of the time was the waiting period greater than 15 minutes.The baseline data reveal a very lukewarm picture of public satisfaction with the police work during investigations: 39% of victims were either completely satisfied or satisfied. 82% of the unsatisfied victims stated that they were unhappy because the police “didn’t do anything special” or “didn’t take interest” in their case. and 11% of the time they were “extremely polite. This is confirmed in a regression of the correlates of victim satisfaction in Table 4. Wealthier victims (vehicle owners) were less likely to be satisfied with police efforts than agricultural laborers. In contrast. The reasons for victim dissatisfaction are clear: there is a strong perception among crime victims that police are not truly interested in helping them or resolving their case. and another 20% complained of discourtesy when attempting to report a crime. only 15% complained of police corruption. Surveyors compared the behavior of police staff to the “normally polite” attitude they might expect from the staff in a private bank.” These results suggest that the effort and responsiveness of police is the deciding factor of public perception. but 35% of victims reported being completely unsatisfied. Victims of extortion and hurt or grievous hurt were more satisfied with police work. and 53% higher when the police recovered property. and 12% higher when the police simply visited the scene of the crime or the victim's home. This regression controls for the type of crime and the characteristics of the victims. 20
. who would tend to occupy a lower economic class in society. This is consistent with the observation of the surveyors during the decoy visit. The gender of the victim (16% of crime victims are women) seems to have no effect on the level of satisfaction. while victims of “eve-teasing” (Indian police language for harassment against women) and vandalism were less satisfied. although we do not display those coefficients to save space. and 27% unsatisfied.

This pattern of information dispersal--opinions formed by hearsay and few real experiences--would suggest that an intervention like the community observer program. felt that the police were generally polite to them: 73% responded that the police were mostly or always helpful. respectively5.
21
. and only 3% of women have spoken with a police officer.
Police Performance and Morale
5
Respondents were permitted to list as many sources of information as they wished. Yet these positive impressions were balanced by negative perceptions of other aspects of police behavior: 53% of the respondents stated that law-abiding citizens fear the police and 53% believed that the police are always or usually cruel to those in custody.General Public Perception of Police
Few respondents have experience with the police or ever interacted with them. 72% of those surveyed claimed that they had formed their opinions based on word of mouth from other citizens. soft skill training. only 20% of male respondents ever reported interacting with the police. Citizens’ opinions of police conduct were very mixed. Here again. and 64% replied that the police were always or mostly courteous. In the absence of personal experience. with only 14% and 16% stating that they based their opinions on print and television news sources. and more sustained relationships through longer postings are all interventions that appear to have the potential to reduce the fear of the police. does have potential to improve perceptions of the police. Direct interactions (through the community observer program). the police legacy as a force that was prohibited to fraternize with the public and was supposed to maintain a distant and fearful image is still haunting the relationships between the public and the police. Even in urban areas. The household survey summary statistics in Table 2 show that only 9% of those interviewed have ever had an interaction with the police in their lives. like crime victims. Most. which gives a few citizens positive experiences with the police.

42 for documentation. which also ranks high among the complaints. If this is due to the shortage of skilled officers. and 5. Only 19% of 22
.g. motivated officers to the case who can perform well-reviewed fieldwork--but rather that this same level of expertise is not applied to all cases. the use of scientific evidence is far from universal in criminal investigations in Rajasthan. then the effect of additional training should be small or nonexistent. The reviews of case files by retired officers revealed substantial heterogeneity in the quality of investigations of different types of cases. were specifically addressed by the project. averaging 6. problems with low pay.83 points) and robbery (+. However. during the long period of trial. thereby making physical evidence all the more important. the better quality his or her field investigation and documentation of evidence in case file. Second. Hence it seems the deficiencies in the police are not purely due to lack of knowledge--when the stakes are high they assign skilled. or poor promotional avenues) were outside the scope of the police reform project. However. More serious crimes induced higher performance from the police: murder cases were rated 1.07 points higher for quality of investigation (significant at 1%) than other cases in the same police stations.75 points).91 out of 10 for quality of case documentation. However. In general. low-quality housing. if the lack of more fundamental organizational incentives are at fault. Many of these issues (e. the two most common complaints. long working hours and no day off.95 for field investigation and 2. Responses to this question are shown in Table 5. The retired officers gave fair overall scores to the cases they reviewed.18 out of 10 for overall field investigation quality. in order of the frequency with which a problem was cited as a worst aspect (respondents were allowed to list multiple issues). the case reviews show that the higher the rank of an officer. we might hope that additional training would improve outcome. these grades were very dispersed: standard errors were 1.There was substantial variation in the issues cited by the police staff as the negative aspects of their job. plea bargaining is not permissible under the law and most cases are decided on the basis of evidence and witness testimony. as were problems related to frequent transfers. as were rape (+. While the use of scientific aids and collection of evidence is crucial to criminal investigations in all countries. in India it is particularly important because of two factors: First. witnesses often turn hostile and retract their statements.

The list below summarizes our parameterization choices. we include the . Were the reforms effective?
Against this background. because by construction. controls for urban/rural location. Scientific investigation was used more in serious cases. and most of these were accident cases. uses only data from the endline survey. Given the combinations of treatment. We estimate the effect of the programs on an outcome individual from police station using regressions of the form. and will be useful reference for the analysis below. and includes the “pure control” station (as the omitted category in the regression). we now turn to the impact of the interventions. designed to estimate both the reform interventions' effects. particularly rape. of
where
is a vector of binary variables describing the treatment conditions. all regressions include district fixed effects (districts include multiple police stations but have a single chief of police). but does affect how the tables must be read and interpreted. and is a vector of control
percentage of the police station staff that were trained
variables.
5. In particular. We use only data from the endline in this analysis. and also in cases of forgery . the treatment variables could have been parameterized in different ways: this of course does not affect the results.cases investigated during 2006-2007 and reviewed by our case surveys made any use of scientific investigation. Summary of definition of treatment variables:
23
. Which of them were effective and which were not? We carry out two sorts of analyses: the first. and the 2005 crime rate to account for the stratified sampling design. as well as the possible Hawthorne effect of being in the control group. data on the pure control were only collected at that time (to leave them as unaffected as possible).


weekly off and duty rotation: A dummy equal to 1 if transfers were frozen and the station got the weekly off and duty rotation intervention but no community observer

community observers: A dummy equal to 1 if the station got the no transfer program and the community observer program but no weekly off and duty rotation.” and “all three interventions” dummies indicate the additional effect of receiving those additional interventions compared to receiving no transfers only. To conserve space we do not explicitly write 24
on the interactions with the treatment vector. to compare a control police station to a police station that received the no transfers and community observers intervention.
In study: A dummy equal to one if the station was in any program. while the dummy “in study” indicates the difference between the control group and the pure control group. Further. the treatment police stations are compared to the regular control. community observers. we need to add the “no transfer” coefficient and the “all three interventions” coefficients.

All 3 interventions: A dummy equal to 1 if the station got no transfer.
Note that with this parameterization. duty roster and weekly off. the “community observer.” “weekly off. for example. we need to add the two coefficients. and community observer to those in the control group. Note that it applies to all stations that received any intervention. except the training program. So. or in the control group that was followed throughout the intervention. and duty rotation/weekly off

Percentage trained: Percentage of officers that were trained. The coefficients of interest (reported in the table) are those .
. Our second approach takes advantage of the police station panel to include fixed effects at the police station level. Here we estimate difference-in-difference type regressions of the form. To compare the stations that have received no transfers.
where
is an indicator for whether the station has begun the reform interventions.

No transfers: A dummy equal to 1 if transfers were frozen in the police stations. and is an indicator for whether the personnel training has been completed at the station by
the time observation
was collected.

Fear of police C. As before. Responsiveness of police to citizens B. Fear of police: “Do you think that citizens like you are afraid of the police?” “Are law‐abiding citizens afraid of the police?” and when asked how the population thinks of the police. Adequacy of police resources6
The questions incorporated into the categories were as follows: A. replies that they “fear them. the fourteen major questions on police performance are aggregated into four broad categories in order to simplify the interpretation and guard against false positive results: A. The treatment variables are parametrized as before. Responsiveness of police to citizens: “How do the police behave with normal citizens?” “Do the police help citizens when required?” “How quick is the police response to distress calls by citizens?” B.” C. Amount of police resources: “Do the police have enough personnel to do the work required of them?” “Do the police have enough money and resources to do the work required of them?” “Should the size of the police force be increased. and
police station-level fixed effects. or stay the same?” and “Do you think that the government should spend more money on the police. denote the
including an indicator for whether the data comes from the endline survey.the full description of the interaction variable into the row labels of the tables when reporting results from regressions with station-level fixed effects. decreased. Corruption D. is a vector of controls.
Public Perception of Police
Since the public opinion survey covered a broad range of qualitative indicators. Corruption: “Would you say that the police in your area are generally honest or generally corrupt?” “Is it necessary to pay the police some money in order to get them do their job?” and “Do policemen themselves violate the law than the average citizen?” D. even if it means spending less on things like education and roads?”
6
25
.

The group outcome is then the mean of the normalized individual outcome coefficients. the effect was undone in stations which had transfer frozen and weekly off together. However. and jointly estimate all regressions in the group. with standard errors incorporating the variances and covariances of the individual coefficients. with standard errors in parentheses. Table 6 displays the effect of each reform on each category. The reduction in the fear of police was similar in stations which had just the transfers frozen. and Liebman (2007). and those in columns 3 and 4 including the baseline data with police station-level fixed effects. given the lack of familiarity with police that the baseline data demonstrate. but no community observers (recall that stations that had the weekly off programs also had the freezing of transfers: so the station that had both just these programs were similar to the control station).
7
26
. is that less
Appendix Table A3 unpacks the effect on fear of police by examining the effects of all interventions on the individual questions that constitute the fear of police outcome separately. the project shows a robustly significant effect across all specifications only in the “Fear of Police” category. Of the 4 categories. the effect seems to be driven primarily by the single question that asks respondents whether they believe that "law-abiding citizens" in general fear the police. The results are expressed in standardized effect size. The most likely. Kling. with results in columns 1 and 2 limited to the endline data. While the signs of all coefficients are the same across questions.The group outcomes are then analyzed following the approach outlined in Katz.7 The effect of the freeze on transfers might work through a variety of mechanisms. or transfers frozen and community observers. or all three interventions. We first normalize the values of each outcome by the variance of the control group. The freezing of transfers had a substantial positive effect on decreasing the fear of the police.

frequent transfers allowed the public to become more familiar with the same police staff and hence came to trust them more and fear them less. robust impact on the satisfaction of crime victims. The negative interaction is thus more likely to be due to the duty roster. The effect of going from 0% trained officers to 100% is to raise the probability that victims are satisfied with police investigation by between 16 and 21 percentage points. but the very frequent transfers make it largely inoperative (NPC 50.8
Victim Satisfaction with Police
The most direct effects of the reform intervention would be found on those citizens who have the most at stake in their interactions with the police: crime victims. Since on average only 39% of victims report being entirely or partially satisfied. these changes
8
It is much less clear why the day off would undo the positive effect of transfer. It is also possible that once the police staff remained in a posting for a longer period of time. suggesting that any effects on victim satisfaction was not a result of a change in the pattern of crimes that they were subjected to.
27
. depending on the specification.” The beat system is notionally in place in the Rajasthan police. Table 7 shows the results of the project on the probability that the respondent reports being “satisfied” or “completely satisfied” with the police handling of his or her case. that the implementation of the day off policy quickly waned over time. as it results in duty officers having no attachment to a particular position or neighborhood. Many have written about the importance for the police of knowing their “beat. Data on crime rates and reports (Table A2) show that there was no effect on the incidence of crime (which was not a target of the operation).
however. We show below. The training program shows a large. their behavior changed with respect to the inhabitants of that area and they became more approachable and less intimidating to the population. This could also help explain why the duty rotation undid the positive effect of the no transfer policy: in some sense. an explicit policy of duty rotation makes it very difficult to properly enforce a beat system.23).

4% increase in case registration for stations with 100% of staff trained. officers that are transferred less often may be able to treat and serve them better. And once again. The impact of the freeze of transfers (and the decline in this impact with the duty rotation) may operate through the same channel as for the fear of police: because they know their beat and the people in the community better. The results support the theory that most of the effects of the training operated through the behavior of the police with crime victims rather than their increased investigative success. asking for bribes. Most coefficients are small and insignificant. which would manifest itself through the way in which the police treat victims and not their investigation actions. frequent rotations may undo this effect. the estimate of the effect of freezing transfers is also large and positive. Consistent with the positive findings from the public opinion survey. or recontacting the victim. Recall that lack of interest by the police was an explicit complaint of crime victims in the 28
. The effect of the training might operate through two different mechanisms: first. for instance by improving their investigation skills. although the relatively small sample size implies that it is only marginally significant. such as registering cases. allowing for faster resolution of the case. Those two variables signal the police’s willingness to deal with the case. the effect of the training may be due to the soft-skills training. Table 8 presents the effects of the training on other police activities. and suggests a 9. consistent with the results on the fear of police. Alternatively. and the outcomes showing the largest point values--whether the police registered an FIR and whether the police recontacted the victim--are those that might be most affected by the soft skills training. although the effect is found again in stations that have all three interventions. making arrests. Once again. The number of cases registered in the administrative records (column 8) is also significant. the weekly day off and duty rotation undoes this positive effect (so that stations that have both frozen transfers and duty rotation are similar to the control group). We examine these two hypotheses in Table 8 and column 5 of Table 7. We also add variables collected from the official police statistics about the number of cases registered by month.represent a roughly 50% increase in satisfaction. training may affect public perception by changing what the police do.

the effect is twice as large as when training 25%. do affect satisfaction). with the fraction of staff trained broken down by each randomization category. since the fraction of officers trained varied randomly from station to station. the effect could have been non-linear: for example.e. although this remains insignificant. not surprisingly. Only when 75% of the staff are trained do we see a 16% increase in victim satisfaction. In reality. Other dimensions of police attitudes towards victims changed in more intangible ways: explicitly including the most frequent of these outcomes in the satisfaction regression in column 5 of Table 7 does nothing to attenuate the coefficient on training (although those variables. We find quite strong evidence that the effect is indeed non-linear: the effect of training 25% or 50% of the station staff is close to zero and insignificant.
Analysis of Decoy Survey
Table 9 shows the effect of the various program interventions on the probability that the FIR brought by a decoy surveyor is registered. The first set of three columns show on the percentage of cases that were registered by the police. and the second of three columns show the impact on whether the police were rated as “extremely polite” with the decoy. Our design allows us to answer this question. that when training 50% of officers. or at least police training intended to change attitudes and treatment of the public. In all specifications we include the number of months since the program began to capture secular changes in police
29
. The largest effect comes only when all police personnel in the station are trained: a highly significant 29% increase in victim satisfaction. Figure 1 displays the coefficients on percentage of personnel trained from a regression like that in column 3 of Table 7. it may be necessary to train everyone to see any effect. These results suggest that police training.baseline. must be given to almost all staff in order to take root. or it may be sufficient to train a few agents of change. These regressions impose the restriction that the effect of the fraction of police officers who are trained is linear in the fraction trained. i.

and thus have no within-district variation on this variable). The effect is especially strong in column 3. While the main program interventions show no significant effects on registration. Thus. the more decoys took place. This is despite the fact that the program was quite explicitly unlinked to any possible sanction: the police officers were warned that decoys could take place. and suggests that the effects of the decoy were particularly strong after several decoy visits. plotting the coefficients on dummy variables indicating the number of preceding decoy visits from a regression otherwise the same as column 1 in Table 9. the decoy program itself appears to have a substantial impact on FIR registration. There was no effect on that specification either (results available upon request). Here the analysis focuses on the districts selected for the program (since stations surveyed in the expansion of the decoy program to outside districts were each only visited once by a decoy.behavior over time. no intervention shows any positive effect except for that of the decoy visits themselves. as well as the number of decoy visits that each surveyor had previously carried out in order to control for surveyors' increased familiarity and confidence with the police.9 Each visit increases the probability of FIR registration at the subsequent visit 6–11%. which appear to increase politeness within the districts of the intervention. Because the decoy surveyors always informed the police that they were being tested if the police actually prepared to register the FIR. in the columns examining the impact on politeness. which introduces district-level fixed effects. they were not able to identify the decoy as such: decoys were local people. the more the police officers knew that they were potentially under watch. the decoy survey program had a substantial effect on both FIR registration and behavior of the police. Moreover.
30
. dressed
9
Since the effect of training on victim satisfaction is non-linear. Similarly. but that the results would not be communicated to their superiors. in principle. Figure 2 shows these effects graphically. we have also estimated a speci-
fication where the effects of training on FIR registration was nonlinear.

lack of manpower and other resources. Pande and Ryan (2011) find that changes in a third party pollution audit program that made the audit system more truthful and effective led to a reduction in pollution levels among firms in Gujarat. In contrast. The Limits of Partial Reforms: Challenges in Implementation
Although the program showed some significant effects after 18 months. even within generally corrupt environments. Olken (2007) shows that. the lack of interest from police station chiefs was frequently evident. and help us think about the conditions for successful institutional reform. One can thus extrapolate that registration increased for everyone following the decoy intervention. Despite the interest and commitment of senior police leadership of the state. A general theme is that the programs that required little collaboration from the station chiefs were more likely to be properly implemented and to succeed.normally. Duflo. despite the fact that one should have expected a positive impact of a more rested police force. The reasons may be manifold: few direct benefits to station chiefs from the intervention. This result is consistent with other results in the literature showing the potential of the threat of “top-down” monitoring to improve rule compliance. two interventions had no positive impact. he finds no impact of an intervention to improve community participation (and similarly we find no effects of the community observer intervention). We present evidence below that as time passed the police stations did not sustain these interventions. and reporting very classic types of crime. A major roadblock was implementation of the intervention at the local level. For example. Some of the possible reasons stem from difficulties encountered during the implementation of the project. or competing priorities such as a violent state-wide ethnic agitation and a series of terror blasts in the state capital that occurred during this period.
31
. India. in Indonesia. The combination of the duty rotation and the weekly off even seemed to undo the positive effect of the no-transfer intervention. the fear of audit led to a reduction in corruption on local road projects. Greenstone.
6.

However. Part of the issue. But in turn. was the incomplete commitment of the station chiefs. in actuality. and 40% of the time the comments appeared quite clearly to have been written by the police themselves. Moreover. as noted. villagers could in principle have sustained the intervention. Moreover. Each police station in the program designated a specific time during which the observer was available on each day.Community Observer
A simple and revealing indicator of the implementation of the community observer program was whether surveyors encountered a community observer while visiting the police stations. A more detailed record of the presence of community observers can be found in logbooks of observer visits and comments maintained by each police station. and there was an obvious commitment of the hierarchy to the program. once they were empowered to do so: the complaint box allowed them to complain if they encountered problems at the station. this definitely required an effort: a large roster of observers was created. Overall. because they hoped to be better served) would be very hard pressed to decide when the right time to do so was. These reports varied widely: certain districts appeared to maintain the community observer program at full strength throughout the project. while others seem to have given up entirely by the last 3 months. surveyors found that 74% of the visitor logbooks were always or often in the same handwriting. observers were present only 10. it appears that the community observer intervention was not implemented in a sustained way. this implies that coordination between the members of a large group was necessary. However. But another problem is the difficulty of sustaining collective action: once the program was introduced to the community. in order to avoid the police picking some protégés to become the community observers. A villager seeking to wait for a community observer to visit the police station (for example. This has been shown in many different contexts to be difficult: Olken (2007) finds no effect of promoting 32
. the observers did not seem to respect the planned time schedule: surveyors met community observers approximately 10% of the time regardless of whether they visited during the times posted for the community observer visit or not.29% of the time. Ideally surveyors would have met them during their visits.

surveyors randomly selected two constables from the staff and interviewed them separately. this difference seems to decrease over the course of the program. show that early on. going from an overall average of 30. In fact. the weekly off program did succeed in shortening the time since the last day off by an average of 4. which they generally fear.8 days. the size of the police station mattered little for the rotation period of the weekly off: police stations with fifteen or fewer staff members had an average period of 13. our last visit. whereas only 34% of control police stations reported having any scheduled day off. Banerjee et al. More effective top-down monitoring (like the decoys) may be a better way to improve performance. the implementation of the weekly off program was much better than that of the other interventions: 84% of treatment police stations reported executing some type of rotating day off. whereas larger police stations had a period of 11. Surveyors asked the constables to recall the last time that they had had a day off for any reason.87 days. and find no impact of an intervention designed to inform the villagers of their rights to monitor schools and demand resources. This is one more cautionary note for the enthusiasm for “beneficiary participation”: when dealing with an institution like the police.03 days in control stations to 25. eventually disappearing by round five. In order to verify that the police station chief was in fact giving days off to his staff. In keeping with program implementation guidelines that allowed a longer rotation period for smaller police stations.
33
.
Weekly off
On paper. presented in Table 11. However.greater attendance to community meetings on corruption requiring monitoring of the roads (though anonymous comment forms broadly distributed did reduce corruption). ordinary villagers may not feel in a position to exert any meaningful pressure: this may reduce their enthusiasm to do anything. including both the weekly off program and any other days off. the regular day off was not always weekly: 60% of police stations in the project has rotation terms longer than eight days. (2010a) find very little effective participation of villagers to the village education committee in Uttar Pradesh.16 days in treatment stations. The results.7 days.

Over time. albeit not at full implementation or as well as the police records would suggest. Unlike the weekly off program. with an overall average of 50% in treatment police stations and 41% in controls. 58% of program police stations posted the duty roster on the wall as stipulated by the implementation guidelines. with 91% of station house officers of treatment police stations able to produce a duty roster when asked. if haphazard. this was maintained over time. Duty Roster The implementation of the duty roster was close to complete on paper. It turns out that. Table 12 shows the responses over time to questions about the rapidity of changing duties and the amount of knowledge constables have of their future duties. even in control stations. as opposed to 39% of control police stations that had independently created duty rosters. into one in which transition from one job to another was more predictable. the rotation from duty to duty is rapid.
No Transfer It is no accident that the two policies that were the most effective are the two that were systematically (though not necessarily completely) implemented: ban on transfers and training. at the end of the program period. there is no impact on the time spent on duty. These results suggest that the effect of the duty rotation program may have been to transform a system in which duties were in fact rotating fairly rapidly. implementation decreased until.Since the program was designed to give a day off every 8 days. albeit on an ad-hoc basis. Unlike the day off policy. 34
. but constables in police stations with duty rotation did have a significantly higher probability of reporting that they knew what their next duty would be. the project seems to have been operating during the initial rounds. there was no statistically detectable difference between treatment and control. Once again. and is therefore likely to be responsible for the (negative) effect of the combined policy of duty roster and day off (as we hypothesized earlier). we can inspect this outcome directly in Panel B. this effect appears to have grown stronger over time. Thus. with the greatest treatment/control differences in the final periods.

and there is administrative evidence that it took place as planned. inspectors and sub-inspectors. We matched names of officers from police station staff lists at the beginning of the program with those from the end of the program. One characteristic of this intervention is that it was possible to monitor at the center that the policy of no transfer was indeed implemented. We have seen that even this relatively small reduction in transfers produced an increase in citizens’ and victims’ satisfaction. although transfers during the course of the project remained substantial. popular with the constables. Rajasthan Police Academy records show that 88% of officers selected for training reported to the academy for training.
Training The training was the easiest intervention to systematically implement. or 44% and 15 percentage points for inspectors). the ban of transfer thus produced a significant difference. and suggests that an even stricter application of the no-transfer policy could produce even larger improvement. Table 10 shows that there was indeed a significant reduction in the number of transfers in police stations in the ranks that were targeted (13 percentage point for constables. but the commitment of a few key players at the top ensured at least partial compliance. While not a complete freeze. This is encouraging. Like the ban on transfers. It is also interesting that this is one intervention that had a significant impact on victim satisfaction. we should expect to see no transfers occurring in police stations selected for the project. the project made the greatest difference and came furthest from achieving its goal.The extent to which transfers were actually frozen can be measured primarily through administrative data from personnel records. For the more politically sensitive ranks. as transfers require approval. and effective. implementation can also follow from the commitment of the 35
. If the ban on transfers were effective. and counted any officers not found as having been transferred. There were of course pressures to water down the policy (both coming from below and from politicians). It seems to have been a low-hanging fruit: easy to implement. or at least noticeably fewer than in the control group.

The fact that these reforms were implemented from within the institution. transfers. the three effective interventions (training. In fact. there is currently an effort to scale up those interventions. Conclusions
This article shows that it is possible to affect the behavior and public image of the police in a relatively short period of time. using an affordable and simple set of interventions. and the Government of India has recently sanctioned a grant of roughly 23 million dollars to build the capacity and extend the training program to the entire state police force. is far from being completely resistant to change. These results suggest that the police system.
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. In turn. Training police staff in investigation techniques and public relations skills (soft skills) also increased the satisfaction of crime victims. using the regular channels. and decoys) could largely be run without continuous commitment by the ground staff (in particular the station master). The Supreme Court has ordered States to keep police officers in position for at least two years (though whether this is enforced or not is quite unclear).000 further officers. while the two unsuccessful ones required local commitment (and community engagement. Within Rajasthan. the police have already expanded the training program to 8. and that public opinion can be affected in the short term—that practical police reform is possible in India. despite its ancient code. The lack of effectiveness of the program on other dimensions carries a broader lesson for the design and implementation of government sector reform projects. Reducing transfers decreased citizens’ fear of the police and increased the satisfaction of crime victims.
7. A key factor in the success or failure of the different initiative appears to be whether they were carried out effectively on the ground or not.hierarchy (who can instruct specific constables to report to training). and on a very large scale. and without day-to-day commitment from the station maters. suggest that these efforts could be successfully scaled up and replicated. for the community observer intervention). Decoy visits were effective in getting the police to register more crimes.

As a result. This was a key limitation for the community observer program and for the weekly off/duty roster intervention. A broader lesson is that barriers to institutional reform can just as likely be due to the combination of inertia at the local level and lack of attention to the details of the incentive faced by all actors in the system than a deliberate attempt by the elite to hold on to status quo. teams were chosen from the “police lines” (posting at headquarters which are regarded as undesirable) to run mobile roadblocks. without changing fundamental processes in the police. while imperfect. and were promised a re-allocation to a police station in the field if they did well in the program. Building on the lessons from this program. police station staff gradually ceased to carry out the program elements. A program to monitor nurses’ absence in health centers (and potentially sanction absence) was put in place with strong support from the district magistrate. but the effect quickly collapsed (and even reversed) when nurses and supervisors started to collude to disguise absent days as “exempt days” (for training or meetings). because these reforms were executed within the framework of existing conditions. the program led to a reduction in absence. our next attempt (currently in progress) to affect police behavior on a sustained basis (namely. Banerjee. The implementation of those roadblocks. and the project stopped functioning over 18 months. Here as well. a program imposed from the top but requiring cooperation at lower echelons turned out to be ineffective in practice. Namely. the long term.
REFERENCES
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. Such incentives were considered to be infeasible in the broader organization of the police. while the senior police leadership consistently supported the reforms and gave orders for their implementation. incentives for the implementation of reforms was not incorporated into the design. and Glennerster (2010b) found very similar conclusion when the evaluated the effect of a program to monitor nurses in one district in Rajasthan. induce them to conduct regular drunk-driving checks) included incentives for the police to behave. Early on.As already discussed. system-wide benefits perceived by the leadership were not internalized by the police station chiefs. Therefore. perhaps even going so far as to falsify the community observer records. Duflo. was strong and sustained from the duration of the project.

961 police personnel in the baseline survey or the control or pure control police stations at the time of the endline survey.Table 5: Worst Aspects of Policing Percent officers citing as a "Worst Aspect" 70% 42% 32% 24% 20% 16% 15% 15% 12% 8% 4% 28%
Negative aspects of policing Long working hours No day off Low pay Poor housing quarters Postings far away from home No potential for promotion Unsteady/unpredictable postings No reward for hard work Poor treatment by and/or no respect from superiors Poor treatment/disrespect from public Boring work Other:
Data from 1.
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.